Bestowed upon a privileged handful, the designation of Noted Film-maker can serve as an honor and a weight. On the positive side, it can act as a safeguard: when viewing the works of an ennobled director through this perspective, cinema analysts may feel pressured to justify even their poorest efforts. (The reasoning is that a disappointing film by a Noted Film-maker is still superior to the best work of a jobbing hack.) One downside is that such honorifics can limit a creative to a constrained space, searching only for material worthy of a Esteemed Director; another is that the disappointment when a project falls flat is significantly amplified. A notable example has recently arrived on Netflix in the Kathryn Bigelow-directed A House of Dynamite, a not-so-heavy-hitter that – if feedback from movie enthusiasts are any guide – seems destined for only one recognition this season: that for Biggest Letdown.
Looking Back at the Filmmaker's Journey
To understand why the film has underwhelmed so, we must retrace its director's steps. Bigelow established her acclaim with a series of broad, agile genre films: biker flick The Loveless, the rangy vamp saga Near Dark, cop thriller Blue Steel, the timeless Keanu/Swayze actioner Point Break. Clearer indication of her artistic path came with the overlooked 1995 film Strange Days, an intense future-now thriller, informed by the Rodney King incident, which also served as a warning tale about the perils of rejecting actuality to find refuge in the digital world. (Bigelow proved more attentive to this than her former husband and collaborator James Cameron, currently prepping the release of Avatar 3.) Yet after the events of 2001, with her standing increasing, Bigelow – like her native country – was compelled to respond to external pressures. The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty tackled America’s recent military engagements in the Middle East; Detroit, released in the time of national tension, entered into a heated debate with the country’s extended past of racism.
It's easy to see why a film-maker on this trajectory might be interested in Dynamite’s script – authored by Noah Oppenheim, the ex-head of NBC News who scripted Netflix’s recent, De Niro-led series Zero Day – and why the platform would strongly support a nuclear-panic thriller after Oppenheimer’s award season success. (One pitch for the new film: what if Oppenheimer, but now?)
The Film's Strengths and Weaknesses
Dynamite is at its strongest early on, describing in something like real time the short interval in which a rocket sent somewhere in the Pacific Ocean by mysterious forces is detected by sensors of a American military installation in Alaska and reported to the White House situation room, en route towards what everyone learns is its target: central Chicago. In this opening segment, Bigelow and Oppenheim quickly raise the tension while undertaking an fascinating time-based suspense: we’re set to wondering where this feature-length movie can possibly proceed once the countdown clock expires.
The response – and this is where the letdowns start – is a revisit of the opening: the film then shifts between the perspectives of those higher-ups (Tracy Letts’ general, defense secretary Jared Harris and president Idris Elba) the prologue only partially revealed. In terms of construction, the film can’t develop: it’s a two-hour movie with fewer than 20 minutes of plot, leaving Oppenheim to rehash the opening section repeatedly, every iteration adding on debated technical details while moving all parties toward the dreaded big bang. Prior Bigelow films had a firm hold on action and consequence; her finest achievements as a Noted Film-maker, The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, were fundamentally focused on results. But here, the catalytic moment is also the concluding action; the drama gets interesting at the exact moment the film ends. The characters are left wondering: “Is that it?” We are, too, for different reasons.
Stylistic and Conceptual Issues
While the situation revolves in shrinking loops, like a doomy Groundhog Day, we’ve sufficient moments to reflect on the negative impact Netflix money has had on the visual style of U.S. films. Even on the cinema display, Dynamite appeared as flatly familiar, Barry Ackroyd’s cursory handheld lensing reminiscent of 24 or The West Wing or modern platform releases reusing familiar locations, including even Zero Day. If Bigelow the Acclaimed Visual Artist disappears, so too does Bigelow the Celebrated Female Auteur: Rebecca Ferguson, sketched in that beginning part as possibly one more of this director’s tough-minded working women, leaves the story too soon, so again it’s the responsibility of a collection of stern males to try to avert global catastrophe. The verve Bigelow brought to her grittier initial successes disappears alongside her; maybe after Detroit’s financial shortfall, the artist felt she had to curb her risk-taking, but a script this verbose required some balancing visual flair.
Underlying Anxiety and Overall Assessment
The dread A House of Dynamite most potently evokes, then, isn’t atomic destruction, but a artist's anxiety of being considered inadequate; stiffening and virtually solidifying as it goes along, it’s hardly surprising the film should have been overtaken by contemporary, reframing developments. What this script presumes is that those in charge of critical decisions would be skilled experts, fundamentally diligent and that the greatest danger to Chicago in the end of 2025 would come from a location outside of the White House. Where prior Bigelow films felt like deeply committed examinations on their time, Dynamite – the earliest of this director’s recent works to fall in a gray area of afterthought, distraction and outright irrelevance – instead spends two listless hours scrabbling around hopelessly out of touch. It’s lacking in drama by design: even before the rogue missile first is detected, the America Bigelow’s film depicts has been shattered completely.
